Arizona's destinations and people are recognized nationally in a variety of ways. For better or for worse, here are some recent lists Arizona landed on:

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The Mission in Old Town Scottsdale was named as one of the restaurants that best captures the city's culinary offerings in rankings released Monday by Livability.com.Scottsdale Convention and Visitors Bureau

Scottsdale ranked second-best 'foodie' city in U.S.

Culinary enthusiasts in Scottsdale can take pride, as their city was named the second-best city for "foodies" in the U.S., according to a survey released Monday.

The top-10 list from Livability.com, a website that analyzes the nation's most livable small to mid-sized cities, put Scottsdale just behind New Haven, Connecticut, as a home for creative cuisine.

Glassdoor, an employment website that helps job hunters find work and reviews of workplaces, has weighed in with its latest ranking of what purports to be the 50 largest metro areas sorted by employee satisfaction.

Phoenix ranked 46th, which means workers here aren't happy, though perhaps they should be glad they aren't in Pittsburgh, which came in last.

The list is based on employee feedback over the past year for overall satisfaction, compensation and benefits, career opportunities, the business outlook and job openings.

Scottsdale parents have chosen the best city in the country to raise their children, according to the online-identity services website MyLife.com.

That is, if parents are basing their choice on the same criteria as the website. MyLife compared the country's 100 most-populous cities and determined the ranking using specific criteria: Average family income; cost of living; crime rate; quality of public schools; and the number of public parks per capita.

A new report ranks Phoenix eighth in the country for cities with the largest number of gay-friendly businesses.

Global media organization Vocativ released a report this week in celebration of gay pride month. The study includes different lists ranking the nation's best cities for gay businesses, gay sports leagues and gay politicians.

Arizona is the 10th most stressed out state, according to a new list from Movoto, a real estate blog.

To compile the list, Movoto looked at six criteria that reflect root causes of stress: commute times, unemployment, hours worked, population density, percentage of income spent on housing and percentage of population without health insurance.

More homes were flipped in Maricopa County than any other U.S. county, according to a new report by RealtyTrac.

The report said that 4,632 houses were flipped in the Valley between April 2013 and March 2014. The average original purchase price of the houses was $172,547, and the average flipped price was $226,761.

Gilbert ranked 93 out of 100 of America's worst places for a "staycation" in 2014, not because of the hot summer weather but due to a lack of recreational activities, according to financial website WalletHub.

WalletHub's rankings were based on an analysis of 20 metrics falling into four main categories: recreational activities, food and entertainment, rest and relaxation and weather.

Gallup conducted a poll with at least 600 residents from each state from June to December of last year that asked residents if they had donated money to charity or volunteered time to an organization in the past month.

Arizona seniors ranked among the bottom third of states for measures such as diabetes management and frequency of hospital intensive care use, according to United Health Foundation's America's Health Rankings for those 65 and older.

Both Arizona and the Valley ranked among the top 10 spots in the nation where pedestrians are likely to be hit and killed by a vehicle, according to a study from a Washington, D.C.-based group that touts its focus on building smarter communities.

The American Lung Association's annual air-quality report ranked Phoenix as the eighth-most-polluted metropolitan region as measured by year-round particle emissions. That bucks consecutive reports that showed improving air-quality rankings for Phoenix, which was No. 18 last year, No. 7 in 2012 and No. 2 in 2011.